ACTA was rejected by European Parliament on July 4th, 2012.

As citizens we must urge our representatives to reject ACTA.

ACTA is an international trade agreement negotiated by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Morocco, Singapore as well as a few other countries, whose aim is to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods (hence its acronym: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Please Download and read the final version of the text.(2011)

Which countries already signed ACTA?

October 2011: Japan and United States, who crafted the treaty, together with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

The International Trade (INTA) Committee of the European Parliament is the main committee working on ACTA.

The Legal Affairs (JURI), Development (DEVE), Civil Liberties (LIBE) and the Industry (ITRE) committees will first vote on their opinions after holding “exchange of views” on draft reports in the coming weeks.

Opinions will then be sent to INTA to influence its final report, which will recommend the EU Parliament as a whole to reject or accept ACTA.

The final, plenary vote by the EU Parliament on ACTA should be held no sooner than June.

Since Spring 2007, 39 countries (27 member states of the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia, México as well as a few other countries) negotiated in secret a trade agreement aimed at enforcing copyright and tackling counterfeited goods: ACTA. Leaked documents show that one of the major goal of the treaty is to force signatory countries into implementing anti file-sharing policies under the form of strong criminal sanctions.

ACTA is one more offensive against the sharing of culture on the Internet negotiated by a small "club" of like-minded countries. Negotiated instead of being democratically debated, ACTA bypasses parliaments and international organizations to dictate a repressive logic dictated by the entertainment industries.

At a time when important debates are taking place on the need to adapt copyright to the digital age, this treaty would bypass democratic processes in order to enforce a fundamentally irrelevant regulatory regime. It would profoundly alter the very nature of the Internet as we know it by by putting legal and monetary pressure on Internet service providers (in a most subtler way than in previous versions of the text), ACTA will give the music and movie industries a legal weapon to force ISPs to police their networks and users themselves.

ACTA has been closely followed by many organizations in Europe and internationally during the whole process of negotiation. There is a lot of information that we recommend to check out in the pages dedicated to ACTA of:

QUOTES

"That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.” *Kader Arif, ex-ACTA Negotiator of the European Parliament.

Human Rights

"The EU should reject ACTA in its current form – implementing the agreement could open a Pandora's box of potential human rights violations." - Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International urging the European Union to reject ACTA.

Privacy and Data Protection

"Intellectual property must be protected, but it should not be placed above individuals' rights to privacy and data protection." - Peter Hustinx, European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), issued a report on ACTA, claiming that it could prove unworkable under current European Union data protection laws.

Democracy and Transparency

"It is extremely regrettable that democratic debate has been eliminated from talks that could have a major impact on such a fundamental freedom as free expression. - Reporters without Borders European Parliament Sakharov Prize Winners

Internet service providers liability

"EuroISPA calls again on European institutions to ensure that no measures could be proposed that could lead to
graduated response, criminal sanctions, US-style notice and take down and, indirectly, generalized monitoring of
Internet traffic and services. - European association of European Internet Services Providers:EuroISPA